1. Name: Mastermind. Occupation: revamped television quiz show. Specialist subject: appearing since last night on the
Discovery Channel. Factory worker Jim Cook won last night, his specialist subject: heavyweight boxing champions of the 20th century. Clive Anderson asked the questions, taking over from famous Icelander Magnus Magnusson, who hosted the show on the BBC for 25 years.

2. Magnusson was born in 1929 in Edinburgh, where his father was the Icelandic consul. His catchphrase, "I've started so I'll finish," is also the title of a book he has written about Mastermind.

3. The new Mastermind is the 49-year-old Anderson's first quiz show. Famous for his dry and rapid wit, he was president of the Footlights Dramatic company when he was at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He qualified as a lawyer in 1975, but by the start of the 1980s was concentrating on writing for comedy shows like Not the Nine O'Clock News. It was presenting the show Whose Line Is It Anyway, which began on Radio 4 in 1988 and then moved to Channel 4, that launched his television career.

4. The new version will stick to the famous format of the original. The idea of the black chair, the spotlight and the "name, profession, and specialist subject" question style stemmed from creator Bill Wright's experiences of being interrogated in a German POW camp during the second world war. The serious theme music, Approaching Menace, contributed to the highly-charged atmosphere.

7. The BBC version of Mastermind was extremely popular, with viewing figures up to 23m. The last BBC show was filmed in St Magnus cathedral on the island of Orkney and the last question of that show was almost identical to the first in Mastermind's debut programme, about Guernica by Pablo Picasso. The new series opened with a question about the comedy series Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

8. The most well-known Mastermind contestant was the self-educated taxi driver Fred Housego, who won the series in 1980, with "the Tower of London" as his specialist subject in the final. Fred was not the first cabbie on the show, though. That honour goes to Robert Smith.